The Museum of fine arts, the Frac Brittany and La Criée are joining forces for a group exhibition devoted to sculpture in France since the 1980s.

Via the work of some 60 French or France-based artists, the exhibition uses studio work approaches to outline the filiations, revivals and forms of evolution at work from one generation or context to another.

Sculpting [studio strategies] addresses the sculptor’s studio as the locus not only of actual making, but also of ideas, exploration and experimentation.

Artists avail themselves of whatever comes to hand, from modelling clay to granite, plastic to plants, the natural to the manufactured, the act to its outcome, the body itself, and more. Ways of working that put the emphasis on raw materials to be assembled, reshaped, combined or recycled.

The studio is for making: some of the guest artists are the sole creators of their works, in some cases drawing on personal mastery of traditional or artisanal techniques: for them creativity involves true savoir-faire. Others resort to the company of experts, sometimes from outside the domain of art, for the production process.

Sculpting (studio strategies) is intended as an exhibition free of all dividing lines between generations, materials, media and, most emphatically, “styles”. This means no discontinuity between the three venues and no system of differentiation within the exhibition rooms. The accent is on osmosis between works, rather than thematic or generational associations. It is our hope that this innovative use of proximity will give rise to the same happy accidents – and the miracles – that come about in the studio.